Did you know that wasps can be pollinators?
Big Wasp Survey is asking YOU to help collect data to better understand the role of wasps as pollinators.
Pollination is just one of the many useful ecosystem services wasps provide (read more about how wasps are useful here). But we don’t know much about which flowers benefit from wasp pollination, or which wasps are most important as pollinators.
What do we need?
We are asking you to send us photos of wasps sitting on flowers. These can be either recent or past photos but they need to fulfil certain criteria:
- If you take a picture of a wasp on a flower, don’t zoom in too much – macrophotography may provide too little information
- Make sure to get the entire flower and wasp in the picture
- Make sure both the wasp and the flower are in focus and the photo is of good quality
- If you are able to, take note of the species of plant the wasp was found on
Post the photo on Twitter with the following hashtags:
#waspflower # the name of your country
If you are confident about the species of plant the flower was found on, or the species of wasp in the photograph, please do include your identification. This will make processing the photographs easier.
Examples of what we’re looking for and what to avoid:
 | #waspflower #UK Here is a photo of a wasp I found on a Globe Thistle.  whole wasp and flower visible in focus correct hashtags |
 | #waspflower #Germany Here is a photo of a lovely wasp in my garden whole flower not visible in focus correct hashtags |
 | #waspflower #USA Social wasp on a flower in my local parkwhole wasp and flower visible in focuscorrect hashtags |